


a tree grows in brooklyn

by newsbypostcard



Series: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Coping, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:01:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6875353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>POST-CIVIL WAR: They have to get out of Siberia. They have to get to a safehouse. They have to figure out what comes next -- how to live in the world; how to stay out of sight.</p><p>If Bucky can only get a grip on himself and the way his mind keeps throwing out memories.</p><p>  <em>They'd been caught in a rainstorm and retreated to Bucky's in wheezing elation. They'd pulled their clothes off themselves with their backs turned, shivering and pained as fabric clung steadfast, pinpricking to their skin.</em> </p><p>  <em>Bucky had leant him some clothes, and Steve had drowned in them. The fabric had bunched at his ankles and shoulders, pants threatening to fall clean off him. Bucky had laughed and laughed and Steve had shouted at him to leave him alone, leaving Bucky only to laugh harder.</em><br/> <br/><em>Steve's taller than him now. Bucky's not sure he'll ever be used to that.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	a tree grows in brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> All quotes are from the novel _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ by Betty Smith. More credit notes at end of fic.

  


  


* * *

  


> _Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. That was the kind of tree it was._  
>  _\--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Bucky's foot drags. Unconsciousness edges at the corners of his vision. But when Steve hitches Bucky's weight against his hip, Bucky claims himself back again.

"We're almost there, Buck." Steve pulls tighter on Bucky's arm where it's splayed over his shoulders. "Stay with me."

Bucky lifts his head and does as Steve asks. He thinks of the fight and smiles. Throwing the shield like a pendulum, back and forth. Back and forth. A team. _Intuition._

"I liked that," Bucky says as he tries to remember how to walk.

Steve shifts, as though to look at him out of the corner of his eye. "Liked what?" he asks. His voice is not like his own.

"Protecting," he says, and coughs out a laugh as his vision goes black again. "I think there might be some good left in me after all."

  


  


  


Bucky comes to lying on the floor of the jet. His arm is splayed over Steve, who is lying beside him. It's as though Steve had just enough in him to get them to safety before he'd been forced to drop them both to the ground.

Steve is conscious. His breath comes to him hard and fast.

Bucky blinks up at him and registers his face for the first time.

"Jesus," Bucky mutters. He reaches his arm out to touch him, but the arm isn't there. Bucky stares at the space left by it, then blinks himself back to Steve again. "Steve. You in there?"

"I'm here."

"What happened?"

"Hit a limit."

"That happens?"

"Apparently."

Bucky tries to sit up. Vertigo and a missing arm give him a few false starts. "We gotta get outta here."

"Yeah," says Steve. He does not move.

"I still can't fly this thing."

"I know. Give me a minute."

"Do we have a minute?"

"Already been twenty. We can take another one." Steve's eyes focus on him -- slowly; reluctantly. "You okay?"

Bucky tries to take stock. His shoulder throbs where an arm should be, already duller than it was when Stark took it off. He wonders what it was like when he lost his flesh arm, all those years ago -- did he scream? One of those memories he can't find buried in him. 

"Arm hurts," he grunts eventually.

"Guess so. You gotta have some nerve connections in there."

"Something. Cybernetic pathways maybe? I never asked. Where's Stark?"

"Dunno."

"Are we… concerned?"

"Nope."

Bucky stares at him. "You sure?"

"He'll get out."

"Of Siberia? With a busted… whatever?"

"Someone must know where he is."

This isn't like him. Concern lights in his gut. "Steve."

But Steve only tries to sit up, and fails immediately. "It's done, Buck," he says painfully, lying himself back on the ground. "All that's left is to leave." 

They don't leave. He can't. His chest rises and falls, too hard and too obvious.

Bucky takes a breath, then slowly, wincingly rolls himself to his knees. He leans over Steve -- uses his good arm, itself beat to shit, to support himself over him, to get a good look at his other side. There's no laceration or significant blood, but if Bucky had to guess, he's probably a human bruise under his suit. 

Bucky swears under his breath and reaches to press a hand against it, but there is no arm to press. Steve registers the motion of the vibranium at his shoulder. Compassion flickers through the pain on his face as Bucky hisses at it. 

"Leave it," says Steve.

"No," says Bucky.

"I'll be -- fine."

"You can't catch your breath."

Steve tries to sit up again, even with Bucky leaned over him, as though he knew it would fail. "Think I broke something," he says, lying back down.

"You don't say. Looks bad, Steve."

"Can't do anything about it here."

"Okay. Tell me how to fly the jet."

Steve's gaze is accusing. "Just give me another minute."

"Until what, your ribs bind themselves back together?"

"Well, yeah."

"Don't be stupid. Tell me how to fly the jet."

" _No._ "

Bucky glowers. His own ribs don't feel so hot, either, the harder he breathes. "Well, we know Stark can fly it."

Steve's eyes find him, but there's something less harsh in them. "Don't even joke about that," he mutters.

Bucky's head pounds anew from where he took Stark's boot to it. He might crash them both if he tries to fly in this state. The only option left is to get Steve up and moving. Bucky shambles to his feet. "There's gotta be painkillers around here somewhere." 

"Oh my god," Steve groans. "I didn't even think of that."

"Avengers still get headaches, right?"

"For all the good aspirin will do me."

"I think morphine's against FAA regulations." Bucky pries open a first aid kit fixed to the wall and starts rummaging through. "Jesus. What a mess."

"Gets a lot of use."

"You'd think it would be restocked."

"I think Pepper used to take care of that."

"Who's Pepper?"

"Nevermind. Any luck?"

"Here." He pulls out a bottle of oxycontin prescribed to Banner. "You're allergic to sulfanilamide and what else?"

"Not even that anymore."

"Right." It's weird when he forgets, given all he remembers. "Oxy make you drowsy or are you immune to that too?"

"Probably. Willing to risk it?"

"Compared to freezing to death in Siberia?" He hands the bottle to Steve. "Might be outta luck on water. I can get you a handful of snow."

Steve shakes his head and winces pronouncedly as he forces the bottle open. "Don't bother." Bucky watches as he swallows several pills dry, even lying prone on the ground. He hands the bottle back to Bucky and stares at him, sighing. "Okay. Help me up."

It is a mockery of a display: Bucky, long since accustomed to acclimatizing his gait to having his left side heavier, is left trying to brace himself against his new situation. He stoops, balance precarious, and wincingly offers Steve his hand. 

Steve eyeballs him, but ultimately takes it, the two of them seething loudly as Bucky pulls him to his feet.

They stumble backward. Steve pulls Bucky in, other hand at his waist. Then they stand, breathing heavily, holding on.

"You got this?" Bucky mutters, his hand bracing against Steve's good side.

Steve nods. There's a dry sound in his throat. "I got this." Then he takes a deep breath, gaze pointed to the ceiling, and puts the barest fraction of distance between them. "Not sure the last time I took a beating like this. Maybe that time in '40, you remember that thick bastard--?"

But Steve cuts off when Bucky lets go and steps back. "It was me," he says. He tries to step back again, but then Steve's hand is on his shoulder -- whether in support of himself or of Bucky, he can't know. 

"Not your fault," says Steve solemnly.

Bucky blinks -- cuts his gaze to the side. Then he reaches up to where Steve's hand is leaning against him and pulls Steve's arm over his shoulders, this time, to stop him from swaying like that. "Let's get out of here."

"You don't need to carry me," says Steve.

"It's my turn," says Bucky.

Steve blinks at him through long eyelashes and doesn't say a word.

  


  


* * *

  


> _People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up -- a place of shelter; a cup of strong hot coffee; a book to read when you're alone; just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness._  
>  _\--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Steve gets them to Moscow. They find pedestrian clothes in a closet in the jet, abandoned by Banner, folded neatly as though in some need for order. By then they've rested enough to stand on their own, but not enough not to hiss when they peel their uniforms off themselves, backs turned to one another.

From somewhere deep in Bucky's mind comes a memory like this, when they'd been caught _in a rainstorm and retreated to Bucky's in wheezing elation. They'd pulled their clothes off themselves with their backs turned, shivering and pained as fabric clung steadfast, pinpricking to their skin._

_Bucky had lent him some clothes, and Steve had drowned in them. The fabric had bunched at his ankles and shoulders, pants threatening to fall clean off him. Bucky had laughed and laughed and Steve had shouted at him to leave him alone, leaving Bucky only to laugh harder._

Steve's taller than him now. Bucky's not sure he'll ever be used to that.

"You got a lot of these?" Steve asks. They're standing in front of Bucky's safehouse in Moscow as Bucky amps himself up to kick the door in.

"Doors?" Bucky asks, grinding his teeth.

"Safehouses."

Bucky glances at him, annoyed that he didn't accept the deflection. "A few."

"And you don't keep keys."

"They're in my other uniform." With a barely subdued cry of agony, he slams his foot into the door.

It splinters open. Steve tries to push past him before it's even bounced back off the wall. Bucky grabs him by the back of his shirt and _pulls_ , and they fight briefly and silently for precedence in clearing the suite, even as Bucky's arm throbs with a visceral pain.

Steve wins out, with a too-large hand splayed against Bucky's chest. Bucky waits a scowling beat, then enters the suite after Steve anyway, breaking the other way before Steve can catch him. 

"Clear," he mutters upon checking the bathroom, shooting Steve a dirty look.

Steve sets his jaw and opens his mouth, but stops and nods when Bucky spins a finger in the air as though to tell him to check for bugs. Bucky closes the front door, and they meet back in the main room after five minutes of shuffling silence, spent scanning fingers along crooks in the wall paneling. Bucky nods to the mattress then, and on the count of three they turn it over together, both of them with strangled complaints dying in their throats.

When they turn up blank and Bucky shrugs to indicate he's not sure where else any bugs would be, Steve points Bucky down at last. "When you have an arm missing and you've been through what you have today, you wait outside," he bites furiously.

Bucky straightens, if painfully, ready to face every accusation Steve has. "You've got at least three broken ribs, probably more."

"I see the way you double over when you think I'm not looking."

"Shut up, Rogers. Don't pretend you didn't take the brunt of it."

Inexplicably, Steve's fist clenches by his side. Bucky watches it; looks up at Steve.

"You wanna fight me?" Bucky asks, quiet.

Steve's face is set. "No, Bucky. I don't want to fight you." One of Steve's hands reaches out slowly -- lifts Bucky's shirt. Steve cocks his head to look under it, as though to see the scope of the damage. "I don't think you know how bad you look."

"You're pissed at how bad I look."

"Yeah, I am."

"Well… you look worse."

"I doubt that."

They seethe at each other. Bucky realizes his fist is clenched, too.

"This is stupid," he remarks.

"Yeah," Steve agrees. "This place have a mirror?"

"You really wanna compare?"

"You wanna try to move on without it?"

"Yeah, actually."

"Fine," says Steve. "Bucky -- I'm sorry."

It's not what he expected; it's a slap to the face. "Don't apologize to me," he says, with empty venom.

"It shouldn't have happened like that."

"You did everything you could for me. You had no reason to."

"I had every reason to."

"You had friends. You had a team. And now they're -- in jail, or deadlocked against you. I can't be worth this."

"You're worth it to me."

" _Why?_ Give it up, Steve."

"I know you just wanted to get away, in Bucharest, and I'll leave once you've recovered if that's what you really want. But if you're feeling pain in that arm, I'm willing to bet you're gonna experience some kind of shock at some point. You need the help."

"I _don't._ "

"You're used to being alone. I get it. So am I. But we don't _have_ to be alone anymore, Buck." Steve swallows heavily, his face creased with subdued emotion. "Even when we have no one else, we have each other."

Bucky only shakes his head, his lip quaking with fury and the barely-contained nausea of conviction. "You need to go. Stark's gotta have tracking on his jet. It's only a matter of time before they find this place."

"And what about you?"

"What _about_ me?"

"You just gonna be here, alone, one-armed, when he shows up pissed?"

"Yeah." Bucky throws his arm frustratedly into the air. "Guess I am."

"No. I'm backing you up."

" _Steve._ Leave me _behind._ "

"No."

" _Why not?_ "

"Because I'm with you til the--"

" _Don't,_ " Bucky shouts suddenly, "say it."

_Bucky handing Steve a key, after Sarah died. Steve saying:_

_'I can get by on my own.'_

_And Bucky saying: 'The thing is -- you don't have to. I'm with you to the--'_

Steve clenches his jaw. He doesn't say another word. They breathe at each other in furious bursts.

"Do you understand what you're giving up?" Bucky asks him after a while, when their breaths have found some steadiness. "Who you're giving it up _for_? Imagine if Stark finds you here. What then?"

"I know what I'm doing." Steve says. "I'd do it all exactly the same again."

Bucky shakes his head. "That's -- insane. You're making a mistake."

Steve shrugs, his gaze intense. "Okay," he says mildly.

Instead of scaling him back, Steve's acceptance drives Bucky's incredulity to eleven. He doesn't want to hit him, except for how he kind of wants to hit him. "You're a walking target as long as I'm around," Bucky tries again, forcing his tone steady.

"Okay."

"Stop -- _accepting_. You shouldn't accept this."

"Okay," says Steve.

A surge of anger. "God, I hate you sometimes," Bucky spits.

Then -- inexplicably -- a smile battles through the tension on Steve's face. "I know," he says quietly.

_Bucky, his left hand on Steve's chest, walking him slowly backward away from the most recent shitstain to have pissed him off._

_'Let me go!' Steve had shouted; then, when Bucky didn't comply, 'God, I hate you sometimes,' hands slippery and fighting to pull Bucky's fingers away._

_Bucky smiled, enveloping Steve in a tight and total hug as he kept walking him back. 'I know,' he'd said, and held him there until Steve's muscles had relaxed quakingly against him._

Bucky clenches his fist and shuts his eyes, and keeps them closed for a long, long time.

When he opens them again, Steve has stepped back -- is leaning against the wall, watching him and waiting. Maybe it's the way the cut near his eye is swelling the way it used to, but he looks as battleworn as Bucky's ever seen him.

"What are you gonna do?" Bucky mutters, compassion flooding him inexplicably at the look on Steve's face. "After this?"

"I don't know," Steve says quietly. He raises his chin. "What about you?"

Bucky doesn't have an answer. Silence fills the space between them.

"I'll leave," Steve says eventually. "If that's what you want, _after_ I'm satisfied you're not gonna white out on me. But I am a fugitive now, Bucky, whether you like it or not." He shrugs. "Regardless of you or of Hydra or Tony… I could still use a place to crash."

He knows Steve's saying it because it's the only way Bucky will ask him to stay. He's not sure what it says about him that it works.

"Fine," Bucky grunts. "Stay. Make yourself a target, see if I care."

A smile hints at the corner of Steve's mouth. "Thank you."

Then they stare at each other from halfway across the room. 

Bucky's hand settles against his ribs, his other shoulder throbbing, squeezing like a vice. Steve sighs; steps forward, looks at Bucky with solemn appraisal. 

Bucky blinks up at him, but Steve only lifts Bucky's shirt again, his brow flickering with concern. He presses a gentle hand to a spot on Bucky's ribs, and from the first glancing contact Bucky winces. 

"I told you it was bad," Steve mutters. He sets about pressing his fingers against each bruise he finds. Bucky tenses; Bucky hisses. Bucky seethes the more Steve prods at him. 

Steve ignores his rancor outright. "This is a stupid question," he says, eventually, "but you feeling like you're bleeding internally at all?"

Unexpectedly, faint laughter ghosts out of Bucky's nose. It hurts. He's annoyed at Steve for making him laugh. He's also annoyed at himself for inexplicably feeling so many emotions at once. "No. What would that even feel like?"

"I dunno. Bruising… underneath?"

"That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard."

Steve smiles again, and this time it isn't tainted by frustration. Bucky wonders if this is just how Steve is now, content and gracious, when he's not in a fight. "I'm assuming medical attention is out of the question."

"I don't need it."

"I beg to differ."

"I'm _fine_."

Steve prods at him in silence for a while longer, then straightens with a nod. He purses his lips at Bucky, fingers ghosting and gentle over his skin as they withdraw.

"They'll heal," Steve says, serious again.

Bucky holds his eye and nods, then forces himself to turn away from him, angry and alight. "They usually do," he mutters, and slams the bathroom door behind him, in desperate need of a minute to breathe.

  


  


* * *

  


> _A person who pulls himself up from a low environment has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart._  
>  _\--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Steve's right. Bucky hadn't known how bad he looks.

Being pulled off that motorcycle had probably started it, and from there it was all downhill. Falling storeys at a time. Fighting a man of iron. No sleep to help him heal. His face is starting to bruise properly; his head aches in more than a few places, worse when he applies pressure. His torso is as blotched with purple and black as Steve had led him to believe. He prods at himself for a long time, just to make sure he understands the scope of the damage. 

He's used to this -- to providing himself this care. He's gotten pretty good at figuring out what he needs. But, though it annoys him, he's glad to have had Steve's second opinion. Even this is beyond the usual scope of his injuries.

Once satisfied that he's not gonna drop dead if he steps into the shower, he strips down, Banner's widely-hipped cotton pants falling easily off him. Bucky's legs have fared no better; he is mottled in every colour from yellow to blue. One knee swells. He tests it, feels it pop against his weight. Both ankles look to be about a hair's breadth from collapsing on themselves with the scope of their bruising. If he had to guess, from the way his foot shoots with pain when he treads on it, he's got a minimum of one stress fracture, probably more. There's no part of him that doesn't hurt.

Then when Bucky looks at himself in the mirror, he sees something like frayed metal wiring poking out from where his arm used to be.

He looks away; his stomach lurches. Low-level nausea has been building in him for hours. He'd thought it was stress, but maybe Steve's not wrong about some state of shock. With a settling hand over his stomach, he hobbles over to the shower, unable to look at his blood-caked face any longer. 

The light flickers above him as the water streams down. Bucky's face freezes in the next second.

He is not wholly flesh. The arm might've been immune to rust when it was a closed system, but there's no telling what a gaping wound would do when exposed to water. He doesn't understand the mechanisms here.

Frustration drags furiously at his throat. He stares at the ceiling. He closes his eyes; counts to ten.

Bucky turns off the water again.

He pulls the towel off the shelf he installed last time he was here and tries to tie it around his waist, only to find he's trying to grasp a non-existent hand around its other corner. What was once a basic task has suddenly become exceptionally difficult. Grunting his frustration, he leans his right hip against the counter to pin the towel to a fixed point and tries winding it around to his other side. He braces himself to catch the towel, whip his arm around to his other side before it falls, but this, predictably, fails; the fabric hangs solely from the point pressed against his hip, its opposite corner out of easy reach.

Bucky tries leaning to grab the towel's hem halfway down, but his muscles are too spent to hold him. He tries inching his hand along the towel's edge from the corner he can reach, but it takes too long. Frustration pounds at him. He lets go of it, fingers splayed wide. Bucky exhales with the fullness of his throat in its direction, trying to intimidate the towel into submission.

Ah -- he should've pressed his other hip against the counter, he sees this now. He holds onto the towel's corner and switches sides, but the problem is the same; he still can't reach the opposite corner without risking dropping the towel on the floor. To have to pick it up given his pathetically beaten state just feels like another impossibly difficult step to this process.

Bucky hikes the towel into the air and grabs at its centre, hoping to start over. But this is no better; he can't find an edge long enough to wrap it around himself in full. Eventually he figures out to lay it over the pedestal sink and grab the corners he needs.

After entire minutes, he's finally figured out how to wrap a towel around his waist with one hand.

Now -- holding the ends together, unable to tie them -- the new problem becomes opening the door.

Bucky stares at the doorknob for a minute trying to figure out whether he's flexible enough, with his knuckles bruised to shit, to hold onto the towel and the doorknob at the same time. Realizing it'd be difficult at best, he considers his options.

Why bother with the towel? It wouldn't be the first time Rogers has seen him naked.

As soon as he thinks it, he shakes his head and stares down the doorknob again.

He tries reaching out for it with his fingers, still holding the ends of the towel. It quickly becomes clear that he'll have to start over again with the towel on the floor if he keeps this up. He stares at it again, then tries to reach out just the once more. His knuckles scream; even once he does manage to rig a grip on both at once, with his pinky and thumb tensing the towel corners precariously between them, he can tell this is going to end badly.

He thinks about kicking the door down. He thinks _very seriously_ about kicking the door down.

"Steve," he mutters instead, setting his forehead against the doorframe. He starts when it hurts him; he adjusts and leans again.

"...Yeah?" comes Steve's voice.

"I gotta ask you something. Can you come open the door."

There's a moment's pause, but then he hears Steve moving toward him as though this were a perfectly normal request. When the door opens a second later, Steve gives him the sort of bland look, with the edges of his mouth pursed together, that makes Bucky wish he'd kicked the door down and scared the living shit out of him after all.

Bucky looks up at Steve with a mixture of self-hatred and derision. "You think I can shower with this," he intones flatly, nudging his shattered shoulder forward.

All mixed levity fades immediately from Steve's face. He crouches and peers into it, his hands finding their way into his pockets. It is an appraising look, not a judgmental one, but Bucky feels discomfort writhing wildly in his gut anyway. He hasn't let anyone come this close to him since...

"Not sure," Steve says at last. "See a couple wires, some exposed circuitry. You think you might get shocked?"

"That's the concern."

"What about a bath?"

Bucky steps back and gestures with his head at the single standing shower unit. 

Steve nods. "Okay. So we'll wrap it up."

"You think that'll work?"

"A childhood of wrapping up casts to bathe and still you doubt me."

Bucky's gotta give him that. "I don't think there's… anything in here that would work."

"You've got books, but no bandages?"

It's a confused moment until Steve gestures at the pile of books by the bed. "Oh. Yeah." He shrugs. "Only had one tape for the VCR, so."

"You spend a lot of time here?"

"Couple months."

"When?"

"A while ago."

"How come?"

"Looking for something. You gonna just let me stand here in a towel while we chitchat about what we've been up to? Prague was nice -- cultured, far cry from the stories you heard during the war, and I didn't feel like total shit there. Now can we get back to my missing arm problem?"

"You could've put pants on," Steve tells him, taking Bucky's venom with infuriating calm.

"I didn't know this was gonna turn into a whole big thing."

Steve gives him an encouraging look and gently adjusts Bucky's bionic shoulder so he can look at it against the light. "Buck. How many times did you clean me up after a fight?"

Bucky closes his eyes. "A lot."

"So let me return the favour this once." 

When Bucky opens his eyes again, Steve's gaze rises to meet them. Bucky only hopes to god the blood rising in his cheeks isn't visible under all the grime on his face. 

"I'm starting to get how you used to feel," Bucky mutters, trying to distract himself. Strings feel to be tugging peculiarly at his arm as Steve gently tucks a bit of frayed material back behind the torn shards of metal. This, at least, has the effect of inducing pallor. "Body that doesn't fit. Try to do something only to find you can't. Infuriating as hell."

"Yeah," Steve agrees, nodding. "Been a long time since then."

"That's what I'm saying. You don't have to do this."

"Yeah, I do."

"No, you--"

Steve leans away, then. "That's all I can do short of wrapping it up. Gonna need someone with more expertise than I have to do anything permanent with it."

Bucky forces a steeling sigh and lets the argument drop. "Okay. Uh… thanks. Can I ask you to--" He clears his throat. "There's -- a market around the corner, but if you go three blocks down there's another one without cameras -- or used to be, anyway. I'd go but I think it's best if I... stay out of sight right now."

"You got it," Steve says, already grabbing for his hoodie. "I'll pick us up some food. You craving anything?"

"Uhh…" He trails off, flits his gaze to the ground. "Chocolate. Anything fresh, red or green... berries, broccoli, plums, tomatoes. Just some, don't need all that."

The smile is slow to spread over Steve's face. "I don't remember you eating this healthy." 

"Must be something Hydra put in," he says dryly. "There's a bit of cash stashed in a false bottom in the utensil drawer. There's two false bottoms, so don't freak out when there's nothing under the first one."

Steve turns away from him into the kitchenette with a circumspect look. "You want anything… more substantial? Eggs, bread?"

"Uhh… I dunno. There's…" He clears his throat again. Nothing about this feels easy. "There's a good dumpling place not far."

Steve reappears from the kitchen, hope steepling at his brow. "I could go for dumplings," he says, too earnestly.

Bucky gives a ghost of a smile. "You'll know it when you pass it. It smells just like that place in Brighton Beach. Remember it? We used to... hate it."

Steve nods. "Yeah. It's still there, actually. I, uh… eat there sometimes."

This strikes Bucky unexpectedly hard -- drags him down, leaves him swallowing against solid. "This place is pretty good too," he says, scratchily, when the mass dissolves out of his throat again. "You, uh... want me to write down some words in Russian or something?"

Steve raises his chin. "I actually know enough to get by," he says.

Bucky takes a breath; decides he doesn't want to hear why. "Okay."

An awkward pause.

"Better go, then," says Bucky. "It's getting late."

"It's 11a.m," says Steve.

"Whatever," he says, and watches the floor until Steve leaves.

  


  


* * *

  


> _I know that's what people say -- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true._  
>  _\--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Bucky, having begrudgingly donned pants while Steve was gone and spent longer than he'd have liked wiping grime off his face with a dampened corner of the towel, sits hunched over at the kitchen table, shoveling pelmeni into his mouth while Steve wraps his shoulder.

Steve pulls at the fabric wrapped around steel. Bucky looks at him sidelong; sees him smiling faintly at his own handiwork. "How's that feel?"

"Weird, mostly. It's fine."

"You wanna do a test before you shower?"

"Nah," says Bucky, looking over. "I'll risk--"

But even though he'd known what Steve was doing, the sight of his arm abruptly ending turns his stomach unexpectedly.

Bucky drops his utensil into the takeout box.

"Whoa," says Steve, taking one look at his face. He sets his hand unhesitatingly where Bucky's flesh meets metal, and Bucky's stomach lurches again. "You okay?"

Bucky wrenches his gaze away and stares emptily in the other direction, feeling the blood drain from his face. "Arm's missing," he mutters emptily.

"Yeah. Sinking in?"

"I guess," he says; then, as though in natural extension of this reality, he remembers the removal of the supporting parts of his arm -- the replacement of his clavicle, of back muscles with vibranium. He remembers the sound it made, the feeling of shifting flesh. The way they didn't put him all the way under when they opened him up.

He retches.

Steve is there -- a hand on his back, a link to the present and the past all in one. "It's okay, Buck," he mutters. "You're okay."

"Soldering." He retches again; he props his elbow against his leg and hangs his head between his knees. "Smell… burning, do you smell the burning?"

"I… don't. Just breathe, ride it out. I got you."

Once it starts, it cascades -- shards falling piece by piece to form a picture. Bucky screams; someone mutters behind him about shutting him up, vibranium is slipped into him, and then there is more. White pain. White vision. Nerves thread into synthetics; he remembers when they built in the pathways in his shoulder that would enable him to use this weapon like an arm.

In another reality, Steve is shifting behind him. The weight of his hand against him disappears; something falls at his feet with a clunk, then Steve is back again, pulling up a chair beside him, his hand a comfort against his back. 

Did Bucky scream on this side of consciousness? His throat feels raw. It's so hard to tell. He rubs angrily at his forehead with the heel of his hand. He wants this done, he wants this _over_ \--

"Easy," Steve is muttering. "Easy."

"Don't tell me how to feel," Bucky grinds through gritted teeth.

"I'm not. I -- sorry."

Bucky swallows and fights against the rising bile. He plays it over again and again. Pieces tack onto the beginning and the end, something more falling into place every cycle. He only knows he's shaking for the steadiness of Steve's hand against him.

His nostrils burn. Mucus builds behind them. He inhales hard; swallows it all down, trying not to smell it anymore.

"I didn't mean to snap at you," he manages, his throat sticking as he says it.

"It's okay."

It is not the perfect clarity he's used to, even after it repeats. The serum means the memories usually crystallize once unearthed, but it doesn't seem to be happening this time. He can't tell whether he's Bucky in this memory, or whether he's the soldier. He can't tell if it's the partial anesthetic that makes it that way, or the extreme pain of the procedure clouding his comprehension.

Bucky suddenly remembers sliding out of consciousness again. He wonders if he's sliding out of consciousness on this side.

"You wanna lie down?" Steve is saying, as though in answer.

"No," Bucky bites back. "Leave me."

"I… don't wanna do that, Buck."

"Stop it."

Steve removes his hand.

"Not -- you."

Hesitantly, Steve puts it back. Bucky takes in a breath and focuses on the warmth of it, on the way it braces against his shoulderblade. 

(His shoulderblade is made of metal; he knows that now. Does Steve know? Would he still touch there, if he did?)

"Used to being alone," he mutters, when he's forced the bile down in his throat again.

Steve jostles, just slightly, as though nodding. "What do you usually do, when this happens?"

Bucky breathes for two cycles before answering -- deep, slow, intended to steady him. "Wait," he grunts.

Steve waits, as though this was an instruction, until he figures out it's an answer. "Just wait?"

"What else? It's not out here." He waves his hand.

"And then what? When it's -- over?"

"Read, I guess."

Steve pauses, as though something more should follow. "Okay," he says, instead of asking his question.

"Nothing to do," Bucky tells him. He looks up at him, nods at the door. "You should take a walk or something."

"No," says Steve.

Bucky nods; he doesn't care enough to argue. He plays it over again. He closes his eyes. He waits.

Steve waits with him.

  


  


  


Bucky opened his eyes a while ago. He leans back in his chair, staring at nothing. It's been two years of this, but it's still so tiring. It's so tiring to be stuck in minute-long loops from a forgotten age. 

Steve's leaning back in his chair, too, arms crossed over his chest. He's been watching Bucky as Bucky watches the wall. Bucky might've found it annoying if he cared about the present.

"There any of those books in there you haven't read?" Steve asks, suddenly.

Bucky blinks his surprise; looks over at Steve. "Uh. Yeah. I think so." Bucky swallows. "What's there?"

Steve gives a tight smile and gets up; moves to the other room. When he comes back, he brings the whole towering pile of books. "I was reading _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ when you were trying to figure out how to shower. I'm guessing you've read that one."

"A few times."

"You know they made it into a musical?"

"Christ. Really?" He blinks up to him with a wincing expression. "How is it?"

"Pretty much what you'd expect."

"Godawful?"

Steve clears his throat and sits up straighter. " _I'm like a new broom / I'm gonna sweep clean…_ "

"Oh my god." Bucky sets his wrist to his forehead; is helpless but to crack a shaking smile.

" _And make a clean sweep todaaaaaay--! Feel at last I could be / everything I should be..._ "

"Noooo no no no no, no way, is this Johnny getting sober? They _slaughtered_ it."

"You should hear Aunt Sissy's _Love is the reason for it aaaall..._ "

"No, Christ, stop," Bucky says, collapsing over his knees at the shrill grate of Steve's voice, laughter ghosting out of him.

When he looks up again, Steve is smiling into the book, pretending to busy himself looking for a particular passage. "I started this a while ago, after they first broke me out," he says, after a minute.

"Started?"

"Couldn't get through it. Dunno why."

"Try again. It's melancholy, but worth it."

Steve nods. "I will. Just gotta get the musical out of my head as I'm doing it."

"Yeah, why _do_ you know the songs off by heart? A little weird, Rogers."

Something clenches in Steve's jaw. He looks at the back cover of the book as he fights against the smile on his lips. "I might have listened to it a few times," he admits. "That and _The Sound of Music._ "

"Oh, I've seen that one."

"It's a classic."

"Yeah." Bucky nods distantly. "It doesn't seem at all… contrived to you?"

"Oh, yeah," Steve agrees. "Congratulations on being anti-Nazi, happy to help with that."

"Exactly."

"Gotta love Julie Andrews, though."

"For sure. She's a doll."

Steve gives Bucky a sidelong look as though assessing him; then he replaces the book on the table and grabs the next from the pile. "Where'd you find all these?"

"Smuggled them in from the States, mostly. Hard to find New York Times Bestseller titles around here."

"You just… working your way through the list?"

"Figure it's the most efficient way to catch up. I'm in the eighties now."

"Pretty good time."

Bucky shrugs; looks at his hand. "Not like I had places to be."

Steve nods and pretends to read the back cover of _The Green Years_ , holding it aloft in one hand. Bucky's struck by the size of his hands. He's just always been struck by Steve's hands.

"I'm tired," Bucky says automatically, still staring at the tension of Steve's too-long fingers.

Steve's eyes flit to him. "It's been a long day. Shower; go to sleep."

Bucky nods, slowly; then, a lifetime later, he gets to his feet. "If I die in there," he says, massaging the metal at his shoulder with a wincing hand, "you can have my dumplings."

Steve breathes laughter through his nose before the smile even gets to him. "Thank you," he says dryly.

"What can I say," Bucky says. This time when he plays it over, his feet stay steady under him. "I'm a giver."

  


  


* * *

  


> _You pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them. Then one sunny day, they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them from._  
>  _\--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Bucky must sleep for nearly a day. He doesn't remember the sun setting, but when he wakes up it's already rising again.

He's thrown himself into the corner of the bed in his sleep, against the wall, facedown and drooling against the bed's only pillow. He can tell just from the way Steve's stretched out beside him that he's already awake; a book is held in front of him with one arm, the other propping his head off the mattress.

Bucky registers that Steve seems to have healed considerably in the hours since he passed out; the gash on his face has stopped swelling, and he appears to have bandaged his own ribs. The band pouches under his shirt. Bucky would bet his bruises had already reached the limits of their deepest purple, and it's a single bed, so it's tempting for Bucky to move his hand the inch to lift his shirt and check on them, the way Steve did with him the day before.

Instead, Bucky moves to wipe the drool off of his face in case Steve hasn't noticed it. Steve looks over at him suddenly, as though surprised to see his eyes open. 

"Hey," says Steve. Bucky looks at him; takes him in as he is, his eyes soft, content, gracious in the morning light.

"Hey," says Bucky. His voice is coarse. When he raises his head, it falls almost immediately to the pillow again with the force of its pounding.

"You slept," Steve is saying on the other side of the pain, "a _long_ time."

Bucky braces himself, peering one narrowed eye back up at him. "Did I snore?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry."

"Didn't bother me. Doesn't look like all that sleep helped you all that much."

"Yeah. I still pretty much feel like crap."

Steve's forehead steeples with concern. He puts the book on the bedside table and gets up stiffly from the bed. From the way his breath breaks in his throat, it seems like he's not feeling so hot himself, after all. "What do you need?"

"Dunno." He tries to think through the throbbing. "You buy coffee?"

"I can." Steve looks at him. "You drink coffee in the mornings?"

"Sometimes."

"I'll get some."

"Don't bother. Think there's some instant shit in the cupboard anyway." Bucky painstakingly lifts himself up with a shaky arm and throws himself over onto his back in the centre of the bed, groaning loudly. " _Why._ "

"How about some fruit," floats Steve's voice from the kitchenette.

Bucky's eyes suddenly pry open. He stares at the ceiling a second. "Don't coddle me, Rogers," he says suddenly.

"Not coddling you."

"I'm fine."

"You're in pain."

"So are you."

"Remember when we talked about how many times you picked me up after a fight?"

"You _love_ bringing up ancient history."

"What, yesterday?"

"The '40s."

Steve clanks around in the kitchen alcove in silence, then stubbornly hands Bucky a plate laden with a vine of grapes and slices of apple and tomato. "Best I could do," he mutters.

Bucky stares at it just as stubbornly before flicking his eyes up to Steve; then he maneuvers himself wincingly to an upright position, with his back against the wall. Steve waits patiently, even though it takes him the better part of a minute to do it. "Thanks," Bucky grunts when he takes the plate from him.

Steve inclines his head and grabs the book, crawling painfully to sit beside him on the bed. "Let me know if you want something else. The dumplings aren't bad leftover."

"I can--"

"Take care of yourself," Steve finishes for him. "I know."

_\--Steve collapsed on Bucky's bed, hands pressing against his own bruised ribs, hissing in pain, left eye swelling shut after a fight. Bucky taking thin slices off an apple with his switchblade and handing them to Steve, one by one._

_'I got in a good one,' Steve told him, muscles slack and spent against the bed. 'Did you see?'_

_'Might be good to get something more substantial in you than an apple,' Bucky said, as though Steve hadn't talked. 'You're not looking so hot.'_

_Steve had gritted his teeth, but he'd taken the apple all the same. 'I'm fine. I can--'_

_'Take care of yourself.' Bucky had nodded and sliced off another piece of apple. 'I know.'_

Bucky looks sidelong as he painfully eats the apples Steve sliced for him and realizes the book he's reading is _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_. Bucky wonders how long Steve's been awake; he looks to be about halfway through the book already. 

"You like it?" Bucky asks around a mouthful of half-chewed apple.

Steve frowns and nods, looking at the cover. "Yeah. Better this time. I guess I wasn't ready for it before."

Bucky knows what he means.

"I see why you like it," Steve says. His eyes flit over to Bucky. "Feels like home."

"I guess."

"You don't think?"

Bucky shrugs. "I…" He shakes his head. "Doesn't matter."

Steve nods at Bucky, then nods back at the book. The hand that isn't holding it in front of him is folded under his other arm. Steve always used to read like this, tucked into corners, as though to disappear into the book. That was before he was this bulky. Bucky's eyes follow the line of his arms, the way Banner's sweatpants fall over the muscles of his legs, and feels sudden guilt.

"Why'd you enlist, Steve?"

Steve looks over at him; blinks several times. "You know why," he says quietly.

"No, I don't." Bucky swallows. "I still don't understand it."

"I had a duty."

"You had an _out._ Why didn't you take it?"

Steve has the nerve to crack a smile. "You really thought you'd be rid of me that easily?"

Bucky pounds his fist against the bed, angry and tumultuous. Under his shirt, the muscles of Steve's stomach tense visibly; the barest of flinches. "Damn it, Steve, it's not a joke."

"Okay."

"You could've had a life."

"So could you."

Bucky blinks. "So that's it? I get conscripted and you think, better get my ass sent to hell too?"

Steve takes in a slow breath through his nose; looks away, expels it just as gradually. "Yeah," he says, and looks at Bucky again. "You were kinda all I had left."

"I thought you could get by on your own."

"Yeah, well. Guess I never knew what that meant until you weren't around."

It's Bucky's turn to look away; he clenches his empty fist against the mattress, presses his knuckles against it. "I never wanted this for you." He barely gets the words out through the tension of his lips. "You should have stayed _home._ "

Steve has no reply. Slowly, he closes the book and sets it down in his lap. In the corner of his eye, Bucky can see his hand hover in the air, then close in on itself a second later, as though in some reluctant decision of restraint. 

"And if I had?" Steve says quietly. "Where would you be?"

Bucky shakes his head, over and over, then forces himself up and off the bed. It's less the dramatic gesture he was angling for than it is a pathetic and aching interval of shuffling. "I wouldn't be here," he says, bracing himself slowly to his feet, his voice run down by effort, "and neither would you."

"You mean that as a good thing?"

"You telling me you wanted this?" 

"No," Steve says as Bucky shambles into the kitchenette, leaning an arm against the wall against the pounding in his head. "But I don't like the alternatives, either."

Bucky's feet grind to a halt. He clenches his teeth.

There's a pot of water boiling angrily on the hot plate.

"Why are you boiling water," he asks flatly, without turning.

"You said you wanted coffee," Steve says.

Bucky's eyes fall to the half-empty bottle of instant coffee sitting on the table. It's the same bottle he'd shoved into the back corner of the cupboard last time he was here, except now it's on the table. Water is boiling on the stove for him.

Anxiety scrabbles at his ribcage. 

His lungs constrict for reasons unknown. He closes his eyes and listens to the water boil; counts to ten; gets his breathing down. Then he grabs the bottle of coffee from the table, handing it furiously to Steve. 

"I'd open it myself but I'm pissed at you and my thighs hurt," Bucky says stiffly.

Steve takes the bottle slowly from him and twists the lid off with a gentle smile. "I don't know how you drink this stuff."

Bucky snatches the bottle out of his hands and returns to the kitchen without a reply. He slams the coffee on the counter. He grabs the only mug from the cupboard. He finds a plastic spoon in the drawer. He spoons two portions of coffee granules into the mug. He makes his own goddamn coffee.

Steve does not ask him if he wants help. Bucky's anger lessens, a little.

"There's tea," Bucky grunts, turning off the plate and tipping the pot precariously to pour water into the mug. "I don't know if you drink it. But I don't have another cup. You can drink it out of the pot."

A pause -- then, as though slightly amused: "I'm good. Thanks."

Bucky shakes his head; tries to stop his hand from shaking in turn. "Damn it, Steve," he mutters, unable to move on. "You should have stayed home."

"No regrets, Buck."

Bucky slams the pot back onto the stove and leans his arm against the counter against the falling in his stomach, the falling in his heart. "You should regret it."

"Regret being there? Regret showing up for you? You always showed up for me."

"Who cares? The past doesn't mean a goddamn thing in a war."

"I disagree," Steve says. His voice is a gentle thing, and Bucky breathes against it, as though to derive from it warmth. "I think it matters more."

"You could have been free," Bucky mutters.

A long pause follows. He wonders if Steve's eyes are closed, like his. 

"If I hadn't enlisted," Steve says, voice low, "wouldn't you still be the soldier?"

Bucky stares and stares, the coffee swirling in his mug. "I'm always the soldier," he gravels back, eventually. "Aren't you?"

He hears Steve's head thud back against the wall. He imagines the way his forehead must fold in the centre -- a gentle indication of his anguish.

"No regrets," Steve repeats eventually. His voice sounds so far away.

But if only because he doubts it that time, Bucky finds it in him to grab the spoon and stir his coffee. "Yeah," he mutters, hypnotized by his own movements. "I have no regrets all the time."

  


  


* * *

  


> _I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. The understanding must be part of the holding._  
>  _\--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Bucky pretends he's tired of reading to cover the fact that his arm's started shaking with the effort of holding the book. Steve, fortunately, is too busy being worried about his missing arm to care about the one still intact.

It has atrophied. Steve had peeled away, with great and shaking effort, some of the remaining vibranium exoskeleton to discover that part of the circuitboard that allowed Bucky to use the arm as his own was severed in half. Bucky imagines its final signals had been sent sometime when he was asleep; that its death contributed to the migraine he woke up with. Since popping a few of Banner's oxy with his coffee, the pain's been reduced to a dull roar, but it's not beyond him that most of his left side has become entirely unusable.

Now his right hand's crapping out on him, too, as though to compound the message that the humanity in him relies on the assassin to function. 

Steve, possibly intuiting the true source of the frustration in Bucky's face whether he wants him to or not, suggests they watch a movie.

"No cable," grunts Bucky. "No tapes. An audio/video shop open up around here or something?"

Steve looks inexplicably endeared; Bucky scowls in response. "You said you had one tape, right?"

Bucky looks up with sudden alarm. "Uh, no. I did, but then I -- uh --"

But Steve's already pushed the eject button on the VCR, and the label on the tape that pops out is altogether too visible. 

_Fiddler on the Roof_ stares out at him in huge, black capital letters.

Steve's eyes flit to Bucky from the tape. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.

"Shut up," says Bucky.

Steve takes the tape out of the VCR and looks down at it. "And you were giving me hell for _The Sound of Music_."

"I didn't give you hell for _The Sound of Music_ , I gave you hell for knowing the lyrics by heart to a bad adaptation of my favourite book. There's a difference."

"Sounds to me like you've watched a _lot_ of musicals, Buck."

"Just -- Fiddler. The Sound of Music." Bucky gives a dragging sigh. " _Mary Poppins._ "

Steve grins at him, tape still in hand. "Mary Poppins was pretty good."

"It was okay," Bucky grunts.

Steve's smile shifts; becomes something that makes Bucky's breathing grow haggard. "Why Fiddler?"

"Only thing I knew about it was that it took place before 1945," he says, looking away. "That's all I needed to know."

"And it's the only tape you had the whole time you were here?"

He shrugs. "Surprisingly hard to find. Guess everyone streams their shit these days."

"So... how many times have you watched it?"

Bucky scowls and shoves a full handful of grapes into his mouth, but even his obnoxious eating habits aren't stopping Steve from waiting patiently for his answer. "Just put the tape in," Bucky snaps through a full mouth.

"Four?"

"Drop it."

" _Five_?"

Bucky scowls harder. " _Eleven._ Are you happy?"

Steve just smiles at him like all of his dreams have come true. 

"Shut up," he says again.

Steve grins and shakes his head as he puts the tape in. "So we're making it an even dozen, huh?"

"Come on, Rogers. I'm trying to live here."

Steve's still grinning as he walks back to the bed. Birds chirp on the screen; soothing, still. Bucky remembers the way he'd felt watching this scene open for the first time; the way it had connected him to memories in a past when there was less noise.

"I watched this a few years ago too," Steve is saying. "I remember it being long more than anything. Why do you like it so much?"

"I didn't say I liked it."

"I know you, Buck. You'd have found another movie to watch if you really didn't like it."

Bucky tries to ignore the question, but finds himself sighing resignedly. "I guess I'm -- trying to scratch out a tune without breaking my neck, too."

After a beat of silence, Steve nods like he understands completely. "Fair enough," he says.

Bucky and Steve each fold into themselves, a slight distance between them. It wasn't there when they were reading, when they weren't paying attention to each other. It's as though now, focused on the same thing, they're not meant to feel the heat of the other stretched out next to him.

It does not stop them from singing along, sudden and simultaneous, as though they'd discussed it before.

"Traditiooooon, tradition." They bob their heads to the interim music. "Tradition."

Bucky looks over at Steve; sees him fighting a smile. "You sure you haven't seen this more than once?" he asks.

"I maaaay have listened to the soundtrack a few times after that."

Bucky fights a smile of his own. "What is it with you and musicals, Rogers?" he says, sarcastic, throwing Steve's question back at him.

"I read a lot, but there's so much noise now. Need something in the background."

"Still just a punk, huh?"

"You'd know," Steve shoots easily back.

Far apart and yet of the same world, they retreat into tense silence as Tevye dances through the streets.

  


  


  


"I love this stupid scene," Bucky says through a full mouth. It's two hours later and they've commentated their way through two-thirds of the movie, falling into a rapport that's left them relaxed and content. "Perchik asks Hodel to marry him, but he starts with 'I have a _political question_.' Then by the time he gets around to the actual marriage part, he _shakes her hand_ when she says yes, like that's normal."

They've broken out the leftover dumplings; Steve nods his acknowledgement, bites into one halfway.

 _When two people face the world with unity,_ Perchik is saying, _and solidarity_ \--

 _And affection!_ Hodel insists.

 _Yes, that is an important element!_ says Perchik.

Bucky snorts. "Steve Rogers school of thought."

Steve swallows too much dumpling at once at the implication. "What does _that_ mean?"

"It's like they wrote this scene from the world according to Captain America."

Steve makes a face. "I don't sound like that."

"If you say so. Watch this stupid handshake."

On the screen, Perchik is fervently shaking Hodel's hand.

"Always good to remember I'm not the most old-fashioned person to come out of Russia," Bucky says.

Steve gives him a long stare. "I dunno," he says, when he finally breaks his gaze away. "A handshake can be pretty intimate."

"What?" Bucky shoots Steve a dirty look. "This a 21st century thing I don't know about?"

"Well," he says. He puts his own food aside and shifts Bucky's out of the way with his other hand -- holds his hand at the ready. "Let's see."

They don't touch casually, anymore; that's the unspoken rule. Steve became tall and the whole foundation of their relationship changed and now they don't touch anymore -- or so Bucky thought. They'll touch by necessity, or by duty, or thanks to memories of bygone times if they forget where they are. But this -- they avoid. That's just how it goes.

Bucky holds Steve's gaze, trying to figure out what his game is. But he looks so earnest, like the kid from Brooklyn, the kid Bucky used to throw an elbow around, the kid he used to throw into bed like he was nothing, that Bucky reaches out and takes the hand he's offered, regardless of the rules.

Steve grasps at it; Bucky immediately feels the muscles in his grip, the way the heel of his hand pumps against him. Steve doesn't shake it as much as he holds, with slight callouses on his palm. The length of his fingers set slow and firm against Bucky's skin.

"Bucky," Steve says, smiling just slightly.

Bucky frowns, shakes his head; holds Steve's gaze for as long as he can. There's no grime on his face to hide the heat in his cheeks, anymore. It's not very long before he has to bail out.

"Fine," he mutters. He lets go of Steve's hand; reaches for his food to give himself something to do. "A handshake -- _could_ be intimate. I guess."

He can see Steve's self-satisfaction blossoming in his periphery. "Must be all that solidarity and friendship I put behind it," he says dryly, grabbing his own food in turn.

"Must be," says Bucky.

They watch as Perchik breaks the engagement news to Tevye on the screen.

Bucky's gaze suddenly flies to the side. He can still salvage a victory out of this. "You cheated," he says.

"Oh no you don't. You already admitted my triumph."

"Your 'triumph' had nothing to do with the handshake. You put on the charm. That Captain America thing, with the eyes and the lips."

"What about them?" Steve asks mildly.

"It's cheating, but it's _impressive._ You learn that the same place you learned martial arts?"

Steve looks at him. "You're joking, right?"

"What, the serum just gave you the gift of allure?"

Steve breathes laughter. "No, Buck. I learned that from the best."

Bucky spends a few moments trying to figure out what he means; winces his incredulity once he does. "Come on."

"How many times did I watch you say 'Corporal James Barnes' with pouted lips to one person only for two others to follow you home?"

"I don't pout my lips."

Steve makes a hedging noise in his throat.

"And I never went home with two prospects at the same--" He trails off; looks into the distance. "Oh, right. Okay, _one time._ "

Steve smiles faintly. "Now you're just messing with me."

Bucky gestures to him with his fork. "Now we're even."

They watch the argument on the screen, stabbing awkwardly at their food.

"What even happens here?" Steve asks, pointing at the television. "Doesn't he get arrested?"

"Perchik? Yeah, he's exiled to a… uh…" Bucky clears his throat. "Siberian prison."

Steve gives a removed breath of laughter. "And the handshaker follows him?"

Bucky can hear his own heartbeat, suddenly. "Yup."

Steve hums; there's another awkward silence, full of fork stabbing and deep breaths. "It sounds," Steve says eventually, "like she took a risk for..." 

But then Steve's sentence falls off; he shakes his head hard. "Solidarity's sake," he finishes instead.

Bucky stares at him. "She left everything she had," he bites back, not bothering to temper emotion. "We never find out how that goes for her. But now the government's out to get her, so I feel like it's not gonna go that great."

"They would've been out to get her anyway."

"Don't turn this into some self-righteous--"

"Sometimes you _have_ to leave it all behind," Steve says over him -- harsh; angry. "I know for a fact, Bucky, you get what it's like to want to get away from everyone who thinks they know you."

Bucky, suddenly exhausted, sets his head against the wall and shuts his eyes.

On the screen, Tevye is accusing God of playing matchmaker against his will.

"I know you just wanted to disappear," Steve says, eventually. His voice has calmed; Bucky opens his eyes to see his fingers pulling delicately at the blanket splayed beneath them. "In Bucharest. I'm sorry it didn't happen that way."

"Are you?" Bucky gravels, not moving his head.

"For your sake." Steve shakes his head with some sad smile. "I was actually kinda surprised to see you still here after I got back from the store. I'd assumed you had one of those packs stored under the floor here, too."

Bucky starts pulling at the blanket, too. If his hand shakes, it's only slightly. "Wall we're leaning against, actually," he mutters eventually.

"Thought that wall was in a weird place."

"Didn't want to pull up the carpet. Gave me something to do with my hands, anyway."

Steve nods. "You came here right after -- Washington?"

"Yeah. I was--"

Bucky cuts off; he doesn't try again. He's still not ready for this. He pulls at the blanket.

Steve seems to start to ask three different follow-up questions, but then he shakes his head at himself. "Where are you getting your money?" he asks instead.

Bucky looks at him sidelong. "I've incriminated you enough."

"At least tell me you're stealing from Hydra."

Bucky is helpless but to give a fragile smile. "I am, actually."

"Are you?"

"In part. Yeah."

Steve nods. "Good," he says.

It's hardest, Bucky thinks, to deal with the urge to fight or flee when he wants to do neither. It's Steve. It's just Steve. Looking like this. Acting like this. He tries to steady himself, to breathe, as the silence spans on between them.

 _What's more important,_ Tevye is saying on the screen, _is that Hodel likes him. Hodel… loves him._

Bucky's eyes shoot suddenly to the television. He realizes all at once what a very fucking bad idea this was.

He casts his eyes widely about in search of a reason to get away. "Need water," he says eventually, shuffling himself painfully over the side of the bed. He makes the mistake of glancing in Steve's direction as he turns -- sees the blue of his eyes, the way stubble is shadowing darkly in his cheeks after two days without a razor. 

"You want anything?" he manages, throat suddenly dry on top of it all.

"No," Steve says. Bucky can't quite look away -- can't stop seeing places on Steve he wants to reach for, to scan his lips against, his teeth against, on the curve of his throat. "I'm good."

Bucky nods; wrenches his gaze away; walks into the kitchen. Keeps his back to the television.

He turns on the tap.

On the screen, he can still hear Tevye singing.

_Do you love me?_

Bucky clenches his fist against the counter.

_Do I what?_

_Do you love me?_

He has to move or his cover's gonna blow. He opens the cupboard; reaches for the single mug within it.

_Do I love you?_

Steve's voice -- "Bucky."

The tap is still running. Without the serum, Bucky wouldn't have heard him. He drinks shakily from the mug; fills it up again; pretends he never did.

Steve's voice again. "Bucky." Closer this time -- he's gotten up, leans against the kitchen doorway.

Bucky slams off the water and turns to Steve very slowly. "Yeah," he says, reluctantly setting his eyes on him.

Steve's expression is at once open and unreadable. He may have spent the last five years learning to conceal his emotions, but that doesn't mean Bucky can't still see them.

"Why _didn't_ you run?" he asks.

It's a quiet thing -- an earnest question, an honest one, dug out of some place of brutal emotion that Bucky can't quite fathom.

Bucky doesn't want to answer it. But he has to. He closes his eyes and takes a breath.

"I need your help," he says, on a slow exhale.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees that something has lifted on Steve's face. "Name it," says Steve.

Bucky shakes his head. "You're not going to like it."

"Name it," he says again.

From the other room, Golde sings: 

_After 25 years, why talk about love right now?_

Bucky shakes his head and tries to steady himself against the adrenaline pumping through him. It does, at least, dull the edge of his pain. 

"I need you," he says, forcing his voice steady, "to steal me a cryo pod from Hydra."

Steve blinks; but then realization of _why_ settles on him. 

"No."

"Hear me out."

"I'm not going to let you do this, Bucky."

This does not sit well. Anger swells within him.

" _Don't_ ," Bucky growls at him, forcing his voice subdued, "take my choice from me."

Finally, a clear emotion -- pain, full and fleeting, pinching Steve's entire face inward.

"Steve, listen," Bucky tries again, clenching his teeth. "It's the only way."

"You've worked too hard to throw away--"

"I'm not throwing anything away," Bucky interrupts. "This might be the only thing that can give me the life I _want_."

Steve shakes his head, gaze sharp and ruminating. "I don't see how."

"I stay out here, and I'm a risk to -- you; to myself, to everyone. Who'll I kill next time? In your experience with Hydra, does mercy appear in their mandate? It could be -- unfathomably catastrophic."

"You can't just go into hiding on a hypothetical--"

"I'm not hiding from anything. That's the point. I'm being realistic."

" _Realistic._ "

Bucky turns away. Fighting with Steve feels like too much. He moves to set his fist against the counter, to give himself a breather--

But Steve steps forward, pulls his arm back toward him.

"Bucky," he says, spinning Bucky around. His hand braces against him. There's something in his eyes, raw, unidentifiable. He doesn't keep talking.

"If you don't want to help me," Bucky says, forcing his gaze to hold with Steve's, "that's fine. But you can't tell me this isn't for the best."

Steve is incredulous. "Best -- for who? Don't you--"

" _Goddamnit_ , Steve, it's what's best _for me!_ "

Steve's breath comes hard and fast; his nostrils flare apace. His hand on Bucky's arm is firm, large, warm; it brings Bucky out of himself, restores him somehow.

"Two years of work," Bucky continues, voice low. "Two years spent trying to reclaim what Hydra took from me. And it all falls away with a few choice words." Bucky nods to the door. "So do I risk it? Or do I stay huddled in a bunker, until you and your friends find me a cure that might not even exist? Even then, Steve--" his voice wavers -- "I'm lying low in _constant_ fear, in goddamn _terror_ , that Hydra will find me and make me watch myself helplessly slaughter the undeserving. That's not living. How can you not see that?" Bucky shakes his head. "Don't condemn me to that. Please don't condemn me to that."

Steve's mouth has thinned, his eyes square with apprehension. His grip on Bucky's arm is tight, almost painful, as though he depends on the contact to keep an eye on his shred of control. 

He looks -- devastated. 

Bucky's devastated, too.

From the other room--

_Do you love me?_

Steve opens his mouth, breath shaking in his throat. "I--"

Bucky clenches his teeth. "If you have ever once cared for me at all, Steve," he interrupts him, lump thick in his throat, his voice shred to tattered ribbons -- "don't let them do that to me again."

His name forms only quakingly on Steve's lips -- a quiet thing, replete with doubt. "Bucky."

"Promise me you won't let them."

"I can't--"

Bucky throws Steve's hand off him in one ill-advised gesture and grabs him by the back of his neck, as though to focus him. "Promise me," he growls.

And from the way Steve takes in a breath -- the way his chin quakes; the way he swallows against it -- Bucky knows he's broken through.

"Okay," Steve mutters at last.

In the shock of relief, Bucky exhales; holds Steve's gaze steady.

 _Then you love me,_ sings the TV.

Steve, softly, blinks.

 _I suppose I do._

It is less the breaking of a dam than it is the snapping of a twig.

His mouth is hard on Steve's before Bucky has time to register doubt. His fingers are still tight against the heat of Steve's neck, his thumb extending high into his hairline; it strokes, it forces Steve down yet further, and Bucky takes in as much of him as he can, swallows him down, opens his mouth against him.

_And I suppose I love you too._

Steve's mind catches up.

The way his hands set against Bucky's spine stems from a place of such absolute devotion that he can hardly breathe. Steve's palms are flat over his ribs; he holds Bucky very literally, supporting him as he leans forward, hard and ambitious, against Bucky's mouth. It's a lucky thing he does; Bucky overbalances so easily, steps back, gripping his fingers in Steve's hair, pulling him after him.

Step after shuffling step back, Bucky's thighs hit the table. His hand flies behind him in reflex, props himself against the wall; sounds breaks in his throat, but Steve swallows it down, leaning in, pulling him close again. His hand coaxes against Bucky's legs up until he's sitting on the table while the other stays splayed against his back. Bucky can feel Steve's muscles move through his shirt when he steps flush against him.

"We're not done talking about this," Steve mutters against his lips.

"I know," Bucky says, and pulls Steve's head harshly back down toward him.

Steve has had -- time. Steve has had practice. Steve is not the boy who'd quivered beneath Bucky's touch all those years ago, when he'd first pulled Bucky in by the collar and pressed terrified lips too hard against his. Bucky had _smiled against him, then, elated and fond; then he'd set his hands at Steve's narrow hips and held him still as he coaxed Steve's lips into something resembling relaxation, with soft presses against one corner of his mouth, switching to the other, developing into kisses and nips until Steve opened up to him._

_He had waited until Steve broke away, his hands still shaking and bunched in Bucky's collar. 'I wasn't sure,' Steve had murmured, eyes closed, eyelashes soft against his cheeks._

_'It's okay,' Bucky had said, and left a trail of kisses along the side of Steve's neck, gentle as anything. He'd smiled against his skin, reveling at the breaking in Steve's throat. 'I was.'_

It's Steve who's confident, now, and Bucky who's shaking.

Steve senses it; knows this for what it is. His hands brace against Bucky, whole, aiming to bring Bucky down to earth and to hold him there, out of his head. Steve scales back, slows the pace; brings Bucky away from ferocity and into something slower, deeper, Steve's tongue soft over his.

It works. Something in Bucky, normally harsh and static, starts to lie flat; he relaxes his muscles, lets himself rest, pressing against Steve the way Steve used to lean into him. He holds Bucky so well -- keeps him calm, keeps him moving at a hum -- and the rush in Bucky's ears, the sound of traffic, the movie in the other room, all evens out until the only thing he can feel is the way Steve's hands slide gentle against him.

The beat of Steve's heart. Bucky listens. Bucky feels it. Boom boom. Boom boom.

"I got you," Steve tells him. Bucky believes him.

_'I got you,' Bucky had told him, the first time Steve had come with Bucky's cock buried in him. He'd had his face pressed against the mattress; his hips disappeared under the span of Bucky's hands, but still they bucked, and Bucky had guided him through it with a smile on his face, trying to hold steady against the rush of affection filling him._

_Steve had gasped, his fist clenched in the blankets. His eyes had been shut so tight; his breath had choked out of him, his ribs contracting and expanding so visibly. Bucky had been so afraid Steve would break, but he could take so much. He_ wanted _to take so much of him._

_Steve's lips had formed a word, then; there had not been voice behind it. But when he leaned forward, Bucky could read it -- 'More,' again and again, a mantra of utter need that had left heat unfurling in Bucky's gut._

_Bucky had pressed one of his hands in Steve's lower back, then, sending him arching lower as he started in on another slow fuck. 'I got you, Steve,' he'd said again, unable to keep the fondness out of his tone. 'I got you. I got you.'_

Steve's hands against him -- hot and steadying. Bucky wants more of it.

Bucky links his heels around Steve's knees to bring him closer. He arcs an arm in the air, trying to coax his shirt over his head; but Steve shakes his head and steps back, then, fingers heavy and staying over his ribs. 

"Buck," he mutters.

Annoyance and anxiety spark in Bucky's chest in equal measure. He breathes against Steve's hands. "What."

"Can we talk about--"

"I don't want to talk anymore. We've talked enough."

"We haven't talked near enough. It's been seven years, or... seventy, depending on your math--"

"I'm--" Bucky exhales his frustration. Steve's fingers are so long and good and distracting and not enough, and Bucky's been by himself for so long, so long. "Can you just -- _drop_ the nobility act for a _minute_ \--"

"It's not about nobility, Bucky."

"Don't condescend to me."

"You're not--"

"Steve," he says, and there's a tremor in his voice as he takes Steve's hand and slides it under his shirt, pressing it against his skin, something low thrumming in him and fueled by something he can't control. "Just, stay -- there, please just stay there--"

Steve's lips are pink, blotched with red where Bucky nipped at them, and the flex in his jaw is so _fucking_ hot, Bucky wants to see him do it again and again as he tries to control the thrust of his hips against him. Steve's eyelids flicker as Bucky spreads his fingers atop Steve's hand; as he flexes his muscles where Steve is pressed against him, trying to convince him to stay.

"I," says Steve. "I -- it's not that I don't _want_ to, but that doesn't make it a good--"

"I don't care." Bucky swallows. "I'm -- I feel lost, right now. I want -- you."

"Bucky."

"I want -- I want you to --" Bucky curls his hand around Steve's neck once more; tugs at the hair on his neck, lets the crack in his voice break through. "We can talk later, okay, about whatever you want, but just don't -- stop -- right now."

Steve's exhale is shaking, stuttering. They are each made ruin by vulnerability.

"Okay," Steve says. It's so low in his throat. The word is hot against Bucky's lips. "Okay, Buck."

Then Steve's hands scan up and under his shirt and pull it softly off him.

It is a moment of tension strung high between them, when Steve's hands leave him and Bucky has to let go of Steve's neck. The air pricks at Bucky's skin, too cold, too absent Steve's touch; but when Steve maneuvers his shirt over immobile vibranium before taking off his own, his hand slides gentle against Bucky's jaw, and he leans into it with closing eyes and a shaking exhale of his own.

"Thank you," Bucky whispers, when Steve's lips ghost against his.

Steve's answering kiss is so deep, so open, and so whole that Bucky is left grasping at Steve's wrist where his hand holds against him. 

This is where Bucky's memories fail him.

When they were just scoundrels in Brooklyn, Steve had occupied two poles. Fierce independence battled with an even fiercer affection. Steve was always elated to see Bucky, but fought to put it just under the surface; tried to push Bucky away, and yet leaned into him every time Bucky looped an arm around him or put a guiding hand at his back.

Their friendship had been founded on the principle of protection -- on Bucky standing between Steve and the latest bully on the field, throwing punches on his behalf and making sure he got in a few of his own. Enough to be satisfied. Enough to grow confident; even cocky. Enough that he wouldn't begrudge Bucky for stepping in on his behalf. 

And yet after they kissed that first time, and the second time, and the time Bucky first took his clothes off, Steve had melted with such abandon at every touch Bucky offered him, as though to be taken care of by Bucky had been everything he'd ever wanted. His reactions had been so total that Bucky had only wanted to give over more of himself. It was so easy for tenderness to blossom between them; so easy for them to fall asleep together with clothes off instead of on, and for the elbows hooked around necks to include lean-ins and whispered affections in the other's ear.

Yet -- that was never quite the scope of it. It was always, specifically, for Bucky to whisper in Steve's ear; it was always Bucky making Steve beg for him. Bucky was still the protector; still the one in control. That was part of it. He could pick Steve up off the ground and impale him on his dick so easily that he often did, just to prove to them both how easily Bucky could take him, and that was the sum of the whole of their relationship.

Wasn't it? Hadn't it been? 

It had all stopped -- everything, from fucking to touching to whispering affections -- when Bucky had gone off to war; when Steve had first pulled him out of that Hydra facility. When Steve had stopped needing him.

And for all the sense it made, it also made none at all. When Bucky was trying to derive strength out of his memories after he'd been deployed, it had never been the fact that Steve needed him that Bucky drew from. It was always the moments after the need, when Bucky held Steve against him as though to shield him from the world. It was the way Steve's breath wheezed out of him as he fell into sleep, asthma rattling in his lungs. Steve had stopped answering his letters, and though Bucky hadn't known why, he had known -- or thought he'd known -- that Steve would have smiled up at him from his drink in just the same way he always had, when Bucky came home; that Bucky would have been able to take Steve home and fold up against him, same way he always did, if only he could just get back to him.

Then Steve had shown up in Europe, wearing that uniform, suddenly two inches taller than him, with hands and muscles Bucky'd never seen. He'd shown up, his shoulders broad and squared with confidence, suddenly able to fight better than Bucky could. He'd shown up with romantic attention cascading around him on all sides.

From the table Hydra was keeping Bucky on, Steve picked _him_ up, instead of the other way around.

Bucky hadn't known what to do with that.

He hadn't known what to do with the fact that his stomach still fell out of him every time he saw Steve doing something stupid, or competent, or anything at all. He hadn't known what to do with the fact that, against the odds, _Bucky_ needed _Steve._ He hadn't known how to manage it when he'd screamed against a fiery expanse, _Not without you_ \-- as though to be expected to carry on without Steve was too much, impossible, unthinkable.

He hadn't expected to want Steve to impale him on _his_ dick -- for him to make _Bucky_ shake out of want and need.

That is to say -- he hadn't expected to be just as head over feet in goddamn love with Steve Rogers at 6'2" he had been at five-foot-fucking-four. But he was. He was. If possible, he loved him more.

Steve lit Bucky's nerves alight. He'd always been beautiful, but his size seemed to do it for Bucky in ways he'd never expected. He had always been a man obsessed with Steve's eyes, with his lips, but with this change was added his hands. Those nimble fingers, long and skilled, drove Bucky crazy wherever they were. He'd wanted those hands on him so much that he had started pulling immediately away from Steve when they actually were, and from there it all cascaded into hell. He'd wanted Steve's eyes to settle on him, but felt he'd burst into flames when they did. He'd wanted Steve's lips on him, but he didn't remotely know how to he would handle that anymore. At his worst, Bucky couldn't even stand to watch Steve's lips move anymore when he spoke. It all fell apart. And it was all Bucky's fault.

They got back to a point, in the two years that followed, where things bordered on easy again; where Bucky could look Steve in the eye and make a joke without feeling unseated. But the tension never quite lifted between them. When they did touch, it meant too much. He forced himself to pull out of the intimacy when it started to build, and by the time Bucky fell to his death he had never found out whether Steve wanted Bucky at all. It was over, what they'd had, transformed into something Bucky both feared and was desperate for. 

That they never found a way to get back their relationship back where it had been before the war has been Bucky's biggest regret.

Avoiding Steve in this way -- had felt cruel. It felt cruel to them both. But it had been, after all, the best way Bucky knew to avoid finding out how quickly he'd be reduced to a state of scrambling need, with those hands and those eyes and those lips against him. He had never wanted to find out, except the ways that he had, how quickly it'd take him to get to the point of abandon Steve used to get around Bucky.

It's seventy years later. Bucky's finally finding out.

All it takes is a matter of instants.

Bucky is shuddering, breaking, keening against him. He's unable to stop himself from reaching for Steve, from pulling him closer. He's unable to stop slanting his hips against Steve's, looking for friction and not getting near enough. Steve's hands prop against him; they hold him up, one holding Bucky's jaw steady as Steve goes about taking him apart. 

Bucky is not in control now, but neither is Steve wholly changed. Through the care and adherence his hands convey, there is still a familiar tremor to them. Still something hums, buzzes under the surface of him; still something sparks, bright and hard in his throat, when Steve moves one of his palms to wrap gentle at Bucky's ribs. Something familiar is drawn out of Steve as he holds at Bucky's side again and again, making its way down until Steve's thumb is at his hip. 

Bucky shifts haltingly forward as Steve's thumb dips below the waistband of Banner's stupid cotton pants, and _there_ , from his throat, is the short sigh Bucky remembers. Here, too, is the precise way Steve has always kissed him -- with open desire, with longing, with the overt and unmasked intention of taking as much as he can. 

And the only thing Bucky can do -- the very thing he's been afraid of all these years -- is to hold on and take what Steve gives him and takes. It is his pleasure to do so. It is -- immeasurable, the pleasure he feels, for Steve's tongue to take his mouth so thoroughly. It is his absolute and undiluted joy to be held down and reminded what it to be unwound. After years of absenteeism from his own body, finally, he feels himself embodying it as Steve embodies him. He cannot help but to feel every inch of himself, save for his left-side void -- to feel every other point of contact where Steve's skin presses against him. 

Touch changes everything. Touch from Steve -- sends him flying.

Even just with Steve's hand holding Bucky's hips against the table, Bucky is as thoroughly taken as Steve ever was for Bucky. It's a stronger, better, _biting_ version of what Bucky's spent years jerking off to; it trumps a thousand times mere memories of Steve on his knees, of Steve bent in half for him, of Steve muttering mantras in Bucky's ear, _more_ and _want_ and _love you to_ while Bucky fucks into him.

Steve's hand finally leaves his jaw and curls around the back of Bucky's neck, holding him steady and solid in place. His other hand dips under Bucky's waistband; two knuckles brush against his cock, soft, testing. Bucky shudders hard, his hips threatening to lift clean off the table, leaving him in choked silence; he finds himself tensing again as the pads of Steve's fingers brush against the head of him. 

"I know," Bucky manages, trying to force himself to steady, "that you have years of teasing bullshit to pay me back for, but please don't--"

The quirk of Steve's grin is enough of a warning. "Do this?" Steve asks, folding his fingers and thumb long, the head of Bucky's cock nestled safely against his palm.

Bucky's eyes are closed; his hand has found the back of Steve's neck again. "I swear to god, Steve."

Steve's thumb traces against the stubble at Bucky's jaw. His fingers tangle in his hair, holding, wanting as his other hand tests the weight of Bucky's cock in its palm. "Bucky."

Bucky's hips move against Steve's hand, desperate to set a rhythm that Steve won't allow. "If you don't move, Rogers--"

But the threat is buried when Steve kisses him, as deep and as passionate as he ever did. As he ever does. As Bucky's ever wanted him to.

Bucky kisses him back. 

He kisses him back until the air in his lungs is tight and hot. He exhales through his nose, shaky and harsh, and Steve pulls him in closer, fucks his tongue into his mouth. He lets his hand scan over Bucky's cock again and again, the barest of taction. Bucky's hand slides under the waistband of Steve's sweatpants; he tries at pushing them off over the curve of his ass before he gets distracted, the slant of Steve's muscles too alluring, Bucky's fingers entranced by glutes and hips and thighs.

Steve smiles. He smiles so much, now, content and gracious, confident and coaxing. His hand starts sliding Bucky's pants off; Bucky raises his hips, tries to make it easier for him. 

"Never knew you had this in you," Steve says against his lips. He removes his hand from Bucky's cock. The absence is palpable, pronounced, but Bucky's pants pool around his ankles in the next second, so it's probably worth it. 

Steve's hand wraps around his dick in earnest, then, and Bucky is swallowed, he is captive, with Steve's thumb scanning over the head of him, again and again and again.

Some part of Bucky is present enough to still be tugging at Steve's pants, trying to get at him. His throat aches; he needs Steve back in his mouth, needs to take him in, and yet needs to be fucking into Steve's hand at the same time. Steve ignores him, spits in his hand; switches one set of fingers for the other, grips the other hand back in his hair. 

His thumb is back against Bucky's jawline. He strokes Bucky off, slow and steady. Bucky's breath stalls in his chest. 

"You think about me?" Steve asks against his lips. "You been thinking about me, Bucky?"

Bucky remembers his task. He tries again to shimmy Steve's pants off his hips. Steve steps back, as though to make it more difficult for Bucky to do it. When Steve licks his lips, he catches Bucky's in the process. 

Bucky is furious with him; balls his fist at Steve's hip. " _Fuck,_ " he whispers, " _please_ , will you just--"

This does it. Steve's hands disappear from contact, and in the next instant Steve's pants are at his ankles. One hand flits back against Bucky's neck. Steve's spitting in his hand again; it is tight, so good around Bucky's cock, the way his palm rubs against him. The certain flick of Steve's wrist is full of suggestion, and Bucky can't wait for it anymore. He spits into his own palm; his hand finds Steve's dick. He tests his fingers against him -- hard, warm, as fucking good as ever.

"Come _here,_ " Bucky hisses into Steve's mouth.

Steve closes the distance and wraps his hand around them both at once.

 _Fuck,_ Bucky thinks, before he stops thinking anything at all.

Then Steve's hips move.

It's a gasping few seconds before Bucky thinks to wrap his fingers around Steve's hand; thinks to give them yet another point of friction, a way to make this even more fucking intoxicating. Steve's other hand is poised at his neck, pressing Bucky's forehead against his; Bucky can hear Steve's breath, too, the way it breaks in his throat every time he fucks against Bucky, fucks into their hands. It's erratic, until it's not; and when Steve figures out rhythm, when he figures out how to keep control the way Bucky had always fought to do when he'd gripped his fingers in Steve's hips all those years ago, Steve kisses him, too, with the sort of slow and rhythmic motions that leave Bucky utterly adrift.

Bucky slips beneath the undertow as his orgasm builds. God, he wants this to last forever. His grip loosens; Steve's cock thrusts; Bucky remembers what his hand has to do, and tightens his fingers again. It's enough of a change to drag him back to a duller pleasure, something blunter that keeps him balancing on the head of that needle. Bucky starts swaying; he can't get the leverage to cant his hips, but he can meet Steve's tongue, he can buck against Steve's hand in subtle strokes that he knows will drive Steve crazy. It does; Steve loses the rhythm, and Bucky revels in it, rides the current into something slower again -- something that lets them break apart and breathe, without dying.

"Steve." Bucky says it before he knows he's saying it. They're both adjusting their grips; Steve's palm moves to collect precum from the both of them before stroking it over them again, and Bucky spits in his hand again and puts it back.

"I wanna give you the world, Bucky," Steve tells him. His voice is low at his ear as he sets a pace. Steve's baritone is a compass, giving Bucky something to focus on, to ground him, to keep him present as Steve thrusts against him. "You deserve to feel all this and more. You hearing me, Buck? I wanna give you everything. I wanna swallow you down; wanna take you all, when you're ready, when you want it."

The moan is harsh and twisted in Bucky's throat. There's no dulling this pleasure, now; no backing away from this, no ignoring the points where Steve's fingers are pressed against him, bringing him all he's thought about for all these years. 

"All I've wanted was to give you the world back to you," Steve mutters against his ear, his breath hot, leaving him heady and stuttering. "All I've wanted was for you to know somebody loved you. Do you feel me against you? Never doubt it, not for a second. Never think you're not worth the world to me, Bucky, because--"

Steve's still muttering in his ear when Bucky gasps and comes all over their hands.

It's seven hard thrusts later, delivered with a curse and a closing of Steve's hand tighter against them, when Steve does the same.

It's a long, long time after that before either one of them moves. 

Bucky's head is pitched in Steve's shoulder, his breath heaving in his chest. Steve's hand stays strokingly at Bucky's hairline, his lips set against Bucky's skin where he's collapsed against him. It's as though Steve aims to reinforce through touch every word just muttered in his ear.

In the living room, _Fiddler on the Roof_ blares absurdly on.

If Steve moves at last to clean them up, it's Bucky that pounds the eject button on the VCR before they tumble into bed -- tangled and naked, with Steve draped over Bucky as though to shield him from the world. 

It's only then that Bucky realizes he will always remember fucking to _Fiddler on the Roof_ with perfect cinematic clarity. His shoulders shake; a break of laughter escapes him.

Pressed against his shoulder, Steve's lips curve into a smile.

  


  


* * *

  


> _In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here -- hope._  
>  _-A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_

  


  


Some immeasurable time later, they start awake to a knock on the door.

In a second's time, Bucky's already slammed Steve to the bed by his shoulder, hurrying to clap his good hand over Steve's mouth as he realizes his left side's immobility. Steve looks up at him with wild eyes, his hands flying up as though to throw Bucky off him; but Bucky shakes his head, trying to show without words he's still himself.

"Who's there?" he asks in Russian, over his shoulder.

"Messenger," comes a voice in English.

Bucky exchanges a look with Steve, but he looks just as perplexed as Bucky feels.

"Who is there? I don't understand you," Bucky says, again in Russian.

"My employer wishes to apologize for your recent ill-treatment at his hands," comes the voice. "He was very upset about his father's death. He was not himself and sends his deepest regrets."

The woman's accent is Wakandan.

As they frown at each other, Steve's hand comes up to tap two gentle fingers where Bucky's hand rests over his mouth. Bucky withdraws immediately, sitting back on his haunches, his heart pounding in his chest as he tries to think through the haze of sleep.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Bucky manages in rumbling Russian. His voice grinds against the currents of sleep and anxiety. He reminds himself of the flat's points of exit.

"This is a gesture of friendship. My employer offers his assistance to yourself and your friend, should you require it."

Steve, now sitting up, flits his eyes to Bucky.

"Let's listen," Steve says, in horribly accented Russian.

"No," mutters Bucky.

"I will slide information under the door that may help you," comes the voice. "Do not attack."

A thin envelope finds its way into the flat.

Steve is frowning. Bucky knows what he's going to do before he does it, but Steve sees his grasping hand coming and dodges to the side.

"Wait," Steve says in English, and throws the blanket off him as he rises from the bed.

Bucky exhales in exasperation as Steve casts around for his sweatpants. It is one of those times when Bucky is wholly himself and yet wants so badly to implement his Winter Soldier training. He wants to throw Steve out the window and to jump out after him; he wants for them to run away, to never turn back, to avoid ever being found by anyone again. 

He wants to _get out of here,_ immediately, without bothering to face this.

It was a mistake staying here this long. It was a mistake staying here with Steve at all. It's too late to do anything about that now.

Bucky pulls himself off the bed and finds pants of his own.

Moments later, Steve stands by the door, his hand on the knob, waiting for Bucky. Having torn the shower curtain rod out of the wall, Bucky waits just out of sight, holding his newfound weapon aloft with his one mobile hand.

"I'm opening the door," Steve announces. Bucky doesn't bother to relax when there's no telltale crash of an incoming assault.

"Thank you for speaking with me," says the woman on the other side. "I understand you are taking a risk, and I am sorry to have brought attention to your location. I should tell you that it is approaching time for you to move on nevertheless."

"Have we been compromised?"

"If not yet, soon."

Steve nods; glances over at Bucky. Bucky widens his eyes at him furiously. He has obviously not yet mastered the notion of what it means to go stealth.

"What is the message?" asks Steve.

"The man truly responsible for what your friend was accused of has been found. My employer no longer harbours ill will; on the contrary. He wishes to assist your cause, in whatever form that takes."

"Your employer _found_ the man responsible? Where?"

"It does not matter. He has been removed into custody."

"Whose custody?"

"I believe you know others where he is being held. My employer can help with that, as well."

Bucky sees Steve's back straighten and immediately wants to punch him in the face for being so goddamned gullible.

"How did you find us?" Steve asks.

"My employer has resources. It is best I stop there. You may find additional information on the paper I gave you."

"Thank you," Steve says, after a thinking beat. "And please extend our thanks to your employer."

Steve peers after her as she turns to go.

The door closes.

Bucky steps out of the shadows, shaking his head at Steve furiously as he tosses the rod aside. "You're a goddamn idiot, you know that?" he mutters, pushing past him and into the kitchen.

Steve steps aside, as though to give Bucky's anger the leeway it commands. The splay of Steve's hands to either side clearly shows his incredulity. "T'Challa wants to help us."

"Bullshit," Bucky spits. He starts gathering clothes off the floor, piece by piece, and throws them into the living room. "Pack. We gotta go, like, now."

"Where?"

"Wherever's next," Bucky grinds out. "We're compromised. We leave, then we decide."

Steve watches him move around with intensity, but with a clench of his jaw, he joins him in gathering their few belongings. "You sure you're okay to travel?" he asks, in a low voice.

"We don't have a choice," Bucky says, pulling the bed away from the wall. He winds up his fist to punch through it-- 

Steve's hand grasps at his elbow. He pulls Bucky back, gentle but unyielding.

"I've got this," Steve says softly; and if his knuckles are bloodied when he pulls the pack out of the wall, he's not even wincing when he hands it to Bucky.

  


  


  


They don't speak again until Bucky's kicked down the door of his Kiev safehouse, fourteen hours later.

"Think we were followed?" Steve says, when they've cleared the flat's two rooms for bugs.

"No," Bucky grunts, hoisting the bag he'd dropped by the door onto the bed. "Still can't stay here. We sleep, then we leave."

Steve opens his mouth, but then closes it again, thinking better.

"Go to Wakanda whenever," Bucky mutters, throwing open the backpack's flap. "I'll be fine. I've got places to go."

Steve shoves his hands into his pockets. "I'm not leaving you, Bucky."

Bucky's eyes find the ceiling as he quells the familiar rise in his chest. "You wanna live this life, Steve?" He gestures furiously at the room. It is remarkably similar to the Moscow safehouse, with no sofa, a single bed, and a stack of earworn paperbacks in the corner. In this one, he'd never even bothered with a TV. "Be my guest."

"Stop asking me what I want. What do _you_ want?"

Bucky shakes his head. Steve turns it around every goddamn time. "You know what I want."

"Actually, I don't. I know what you think is best."

"Same thing."

"No, it's not. What do you _want_ for yourself, Buck? I'm not talking what you think is possible. It took me -- a lot longer than two years when they pulled me out of the ice to figure out what I wanted out of this life. I'm concerned you're just delaying the question."

"Why would I -- why would I bother thinking about what I _want_ , beyond what is _possible_?"

"You deserve--"

"To hell with desert!" Bucky says, throwing aside whatever it was he'd just pulled out of the pack. It flies against the wall; gives a hard thunk as it hits the floor. "I didn't _deserve_ a goddamn bit of this. Do you know I have to--" 

Honesty rises within him; he pauses to breathe against it, to figure out if he can quell this down, too, the way he struggles against everything else. But as Steve blinks toward him, he realizes he's gonna have to give Steve something if he's to help him on Bucky's terms.

"I have to structure my day," he tries again, forcing his voice low. "If I want to function like a person and not an assassin, I have -- guidelines. I have to lie in bed and try to sleep for at least six consecutive hours. I have to get up and lie down at the same time, every day, to try to train my body to sleep again. I had a minimum of twelve failsafes in that Moscow apartment when I first got to it. I had the windows boarded up, except that small one above the bed. I had the _door_ boarded up. It took me the entire ten weeks I was there to dismantle it all. I did a bit every day. I had an hour scheduled for trap disarmament, and fifty-five of those sixty minutes were spent staring at the thing I was supposed to take apart, just trying to get my breathing down. I had to remember to get myself _food_ , Steve. Twenty-six wake-ups over seventy years and I hadn't had a goddamn thing to eat. I kept waking up ravenous, wondering where the hell to get an IV in downtown Moscow.

"And I'd already decided I wanted to be a person then, which was its own fucking process," he continues. "I spent three weeks fighting against the urge to massacre anyone who looked at me wrong, trying to figure out who I was, before I even figured out how to stop listening to the part of my brain telling me to do that shit. Then, once I started listening to myself instead, all this other shit came cascading down. Do you understand what that means, when I say I had to _choose_ this? _On purpose?_ I _chose_ to put myself through this neurotic hell, just because it sounded better to me than carrying on Hydra's work of blocking my humanity. I _chose_ to remember who I used to be. I put effort into being a person who vomited every day for six months. But even through all that, I don't even know if I'm remembering myself right. I don't know how much of what I've built for myself these last two years has been infiltrated by the shit they put in my head. Do you get on any level what that's been like for me, Steve?"

Bucky gestures furiously at his own chest, trying to convey something to Steve that he can't put into words. "Can you even try to register what it's been like to remember every event from my life, one at a time, out of order, and to try to make sense of it while doubting every flash? To feel nonsensical loss, several times a day, every day, and to wonder if it ever really happened? To _hate_ having to remember what it was like before _blood_ ruled my life, dictated my ambitions and my skillsets -- to know that I was making me hate myself _on purpose_? That I _chose_ this? Can you imagine just for a _second_ what it was like for me to remember _trying to kill you_ more vividly and more acutely than I was able to remember what it was like to--"

Bucky finally knows he's said too much; his face goes slack, he leans back where he stands, lets the sentence die in his throat. 

But Steve doesn't flinch; doesn't do anything other than blink at him. He doesn't look surprised, or horrified, or anything other than attentive and sad.

"I've thought about what that must be like for you," says Steve, eventually. He swallows. His jaw clenches. "A lot. But, no. I can't pretend I understand it, Bucky."

Bucky presses the back of his hand hard against his forehead. It shakes. Steve's gaze flickers up to it, then settles on Bucky's eyes again, as he waits.

"You keep asking me what I want," Bucky manages, eventually. "But on any given day, my number one priority is to get through the day alive and myself, and to do it without killing anyone. Everything else is extra." He clenches his jaw. "But I'm starting to figure out that the further away I get from the Soldier, I get a lot of extra. I'm -- starting to get what it's like to have preferences again. It turns out that I _really_ like chocolate. I eat a lot of it. I like dumplings. I like that shitty instant coffee. I'm--" he smiles, unexpectedly -- "apparently at a point now where I get to fight against something palpable, for something that matters. I get to have principles again, a reasonable cause, in the _present_. I've somehow -- convinced you to follow me around like a pathetic little puppy, the way you used to."

Steve smiles, too.

"But I've -- done all I can on my own. Just choosing this fight isn't enough anymore. Hydra -- is still out there, and now I know for a fact that they're targeting me. So I can keep trying to live out here, but I lose the extra. I let Hydra reduce me back to being a series of impulses it takes all of my being to try to control." Bucky shakes his head. "My life goes back to boarded up windows. After all that work, their control of me still wins out."

"It doesn't have to be like that," Steve says. "You're not alone anymore, Bucky."

Bucky shakes his head. "You're not getting it. This isn't a life. It's basic fucking survival."

" _You're_ not getting it. I'm saying it doesn't have to be."

"This--" Bucky waves his finger around the room-- "is like having your free will held hostage, Steve. You're saying possibility exists where it doesn't. Not without incompatible risk."

Steve takes a breath. "So we find another way."

Bucky fist closes in over itself, by his side. "Steve. There is. No. Other. Way." He forces a steadying breath. "Not _unless_ we figure out how to get rid of the tools that lets Hydra take control of me in the first place. I -- can't be part of that process. It's also something that's never going to happen if there's a risk I'll be triggered _and_ you're hell-bent on protecting me at the same time. I'm a liability to your mission."

"Bucky--"

"Steve, I swear to god, if you don't start paying attention to what I'm saying--"

"I want to explain something to you about _my_ life, now."

Bucky blinks. He nods; relaxes his shoulders, and waits.

"You keep talking about 'the mission'," Steve says. After so long without a razor, he's grown nearly a proper beard, and in the dim yellow light of the apartment's only lightbulb, he looks, to Bucky's eyes, improbably soft. "What do you think my 'mission' is?"

Bucky rolls his eyes, shrugging a shoulder. "Love and justice, or whatever the Captain America mandate is."

Steve's lips quirk, not unkindly. "For all you remember, you forget there's a person under all this training."

"What have I forgotten? You're not exactly a mystery to me, Steve. You've never hid from a bully in your life, and you're not about to start now."

To this, Steve finally has nothing to say.

"I need your help," Bucky says mildly. "You don't like the terms, I get that. I don't really like them either. But that doesn't change that it's the best solution. It's the best shot there is at making sure they don't make me--" He cuts off again; he swallows, finds a better way to finish the sentence. "To make sure they don't control me. That they don't take me away from myself. Anymore."

"Bucky, if this is about living in fear, I don't think--"

"It goes deeper than that. It's realizing the implications of what they've done to me. I go back to believing that any one person could be the next person to trigger me, I reduce myself to the weapon. I _become_ the weapon. No amount of hiding is going to change the fact that I'm throwing away all this work I've done. My options are unconsciousness until circumstances change, or the effective death of the person I've spent the last two years rebuilding myself into. To be honest with you, I kinda can't believe you're still arguing for the latter."

Steve stares at him a long, long time.

"Does it bother you," Steve says, "that putting you under requires Hydra's technology to do it?"

Bucky shakes his head. "It's still the scenario with the least risk." He shuts his eyes and allows a hint of a smile. "Trust me. I've run assessments."

Steve's nodding when Bucky opens his eyes again. "I trust you, Buck."

It's not an agreement. That's not lost on either of them.

Steve reaches behind him and pulls the envelope out from his waistband. "I think T'Challa can help," he says, voice low.

Just like that, all hope Bucky had had in the conversation falls out of him. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Hear me out."

"No."

Steve smirks. "Just _no_?"

"Don't charm your way out of this, Rogers."

"There are holes in your plan," Steve points out calmly. "It might take me years to find the info, and I'm not exactly in a position to house you myself. Where are you gonna stay while you're out, where Hydra can't find you? You might be at significantly greater risk while you're unconscious. God knows what kind of safeguards they might have on their own equipment…"

"Are you forgetting that guy wanted to kill me 48 hours ago?"

"So we check him out. And if Zemo is where he says he is?" Steve shakes his head, still holding the envelope aloft. "He's done us a huge solid already, before we even get to the other questions. That has to be worth something."

Bucky's gut contracts at the way Steve is framing this as a question of _us_. "I'm not in a real trusting frame of mind these days, Steve," he says. "It's gonna take a hell of a lot more than a bit of fact-checking to make me think this is a good idea."

Steve looks at him, but the way he blinks at Bucky tells him all he needs to know about which way this situation's gonna go. "I think…" Steve shakes his head and looks away. "I think you were right to think that I'm only gonna be able to help you on these terms… if I know you're safe." When Steve looks at Bucky again, it is with such characteristically stubborn certainty that Bucky feels the pull of amusement. "If you're sure that going under is what you want -- if you think it's the best way to preserve the work you've done -- that's not my call. I'll steal you the cryo pod. I'll do what I can to track down ways to get the trigger out of you. I'll do all that, if that's what you _really_ want."

Bucky nods, slowly, relief spreading out to the very tips of his toes. "Thank you," he says, his voice a cracking whisper.

"But… I can't do it alone. Sam, Nat, Clint, Wanda… after all they've given me, I can't leave them behind."

A steadying breath. "Yeah. I kinda guessed that."

Steve's expression does not look promising. "And I can't spring them out of jail alone… either."

"Ugh." Bucky pinches at his eyes. 

"I'm not even sure where they are. If T'Challa knows… if T'Challa can _help_..."

"You're assuming T'Challa even sent us that message," Bucky says exhaustedly. "What if it's a Hydra trap?"

"What if it's not?"

Bucky looks to the ceiling; hears the beating of his heart. Silently, breathing deeply, he counts to ten before continuing.

"What if it is," he says, stubbornly.

"Then I'll have vetted the situation either way," says Steve. "You -- don't have to be involved. You can stay here, or keep hopping safehouses, or _whatever_ you need, Bucky, but I want -- I _have_ to find out if this offer is legitimate." 

Bucky can only shake his head at him, again and again. "For the sake of argument, let's assume it is," he says, through clenching teeth. "Let's say King Panther really did send this message. _Why_ would he be offering anything to us? Why keep us out of the public eye? Wasn't he _just_ at a UN conference trying to leash you? What's changed now?"

"I think the conference's outcome might've shifted his motives a bit."

"One maverick Hydra agent killed his father. If he knows that, he's not going to support a world where there are _more_ agents operating without oversight."

"I think he would support the idea that someone with a good heart, operating on their own authority, might have really been able to make a difference in that situation."

Bucky shakes his head at him, at a loss for words. There's nothing he can say to get through.

"I know you can't trust him, Bucky," Steve says, reading his mind. "But -- I hope you _can_ trust me. Let me vet the guy. Let me see what he might be able to do for us." A hint of a smile again. "You've gotta be able to see that all I've been trying to do since 1942 is to try to keep you safe. I wouldn't put you in a situation I didn't think would contribute to that goal."

Bucky stares incredulously on. "You want me to use you as -- my _trust proxy._ "

Steve flinches. "Yeah, maybe that wasn't the best way to put it."

"Look." Bucky forces a deep breath. "I can't make myself any clearer. Whether he thinks it was Zemo or me, it's still a Hydra agent that killed his dad. What makes you think he'd have the slightest interest in helping me when I fall into that category?"

Steve looks off into the distance; then some sad smile sparks on his face. "I don't know," he says, looking at Bucky. "Maybe it's... naive, but I just can't help but think that if he went through that much trouble to extend an offer of assistance without having _any_ self-interested reason to do it--"

"You think he doesn't have a reason? What easier way to get my ass on a platter than to invite me to come over!"

"I think that if he still wanted to kill you," says Steve, "he would've done it in Moscow."

Bucky tenses shaking fingers against his forehead. "What could have possibly changed his mind that much in two days?"

"Well, for starters, it sounds like he found and incarcerated the guy _actually_ responsible for the UN bombing in the first place." Steve shrugs. "Or he _may_ have, at the very least. It's worth looking into, is it not? We'll never know for sure if we don't follow up."

Bucky purses his lips at him; keeps shakes his head. "When are you gonna stop putting your blind trust in the alleged goodness of humanity, Steve?"

But to his surprise, Steve smiles. "Never," he says, quiet but sure. "Not when they keep proving to me they're worth it."

They stare at each other -- two paces, or a world, apart.

"People change," says Steve at last. "I've seen it, Buck. Not least in you."

Bucky lets a harsh breath out through his lips. "That's an easy second on the list of really manipulative things you could say to me."

"Yeah, maybe. But regardless of the circumstances, extensions of friendship don't happen like this every day." He lifts the hand holding the envelope again. "We'd be -- well. _I'd_ have to be an idiot not to at least see what he has to say. You and I have -- nothing, right now, Bucky. No resources, few friends… between Tony and Hydra, we don't even have a safe place to stay long-term." He shrugs. "We need anything we can get. This counts as anything."

"Steve…"

"If it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. But it looks like T'Challa already knows where we are, and he hasn't tried to kill us yet." Steve waits for Bucky's rebuttal to that one; to his chagrin, he has none. "We have nothing to lose, and potentially everything to gain, by reaching out."

"Speak for yourself," Bucky mutters.

Steve stares at him. They hold each other's gaze for several long, lasting beats. Then, with a calming sigh, Steve stoops to easily, painlessly to the ground, to pick up what Bucky had thrown against the wall.

"I won't mention you to T'Challa at all, if you don't want me to," Steve says, stepping forward with honest eyes. "I promise you, Buck. If you believe me at all, believe that. But if I've learned anything since you left on that boat outta Brooklyn, it's that hope is usually found where you don't think to look. Boarded-up lots. Neglected rubbish heaps. Cracks in the cement." He hands Bucky the book he's just picked up. "That's just the kind of tree it is."

Bucky looks down to see his fingers grasping around the front cover of _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_.

"There's nothing I wouldn't do to keep you safe, Bucky." Steve reaches out; puts a hand on Bucky's shoulder, only for it to travel and grasp against his neck instead. "It's what we do, you and me. It's all we've ever done. You just have to trust me to do it."

_'Don't enlist, Steve,' Bucky had said. It was August; the heat in Bucky's apartment was stifling, asphyxiating, but Steve was still curled up against him like he depended on his warmth. 'I mean it. This -- isn't what you want. There's no just crusade to be found here. Trust me.'_

_Steve had only smiled against Bucky's ribs; spread his hand wider against him, hitched his leg closer. 'And let someone else have your back? Come on, Buck, neither one of us wants that.'_

_'Stop joking around. I'm serious.'_

_'So am I.' Steve's face aglow in the thin light from the hallway; Bucky basking in the softness of him, before remembering he's mad. 'I haven't --_ started _to pay you back for all the times you've come through for me.' Steve nestling back against him. 'It's my turn.'_

That slight, sad smile on Steve's face again. "It's my turn," he's saying.

If it's dread that forces the shake into Bucky's next inhale, it is still, if barely, subdued by a sprouting seed of hope.

"Okay," Bucky says, and swallows hard as his hand clasps against the back of Steve's neck in turn. "Go ahead, Rogers. Do your worst." He tugs Steve closer; shuts his eyes against the feel of his breath. "But don't think I'm not gonna save your life right back the second I get out of that thing."

Bucky feels the grin spreading over Steve's lips. "Yeah," Steve says; and he wraps his hands around him -- sure and tensile, as Bucky always imagines. "Sure, Bucky. I'd expect nothing less."

  


  


**Author's Note:**

> So this movie tore me apart…!
> 
> All the _A Tree Grows_ quotes appearing in this fic are in fact either direct or paraphrased from the novel _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ by Betty Smith. I dropped some words and added occasional punctuation, but did not change any of the words, though many of the quotes are taken wildly out of context. You can also, as with the _Fiddler on the Roof_ soundtrack, listen to the soundtrack for the 1951 musical _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ on Spotify (but please do imagine Steve Rogers singing along and doing Shirley Booth's voice if you do).
> 
> ("Oh, shut up. You and your penny postcards."
> 
> Bucky blinks. "What?"
> 
> "So I'm not even worth a two-cent stamp."
> 
> "Is this that stupid musical again?")
> 
> Questions on Bucky's arm situation were answered primarily by [cptsassrogers](http://cptsassrogers.tumblr.com/post/84735604367/inspired-by-therealdeepsixs-meta-on-the-winter)'s anatomy lessons and [this meta](http://therealdeepsix.tumblr.com/post/83026776750/ive-been-thinking-about-buckys-robot-arm-a-lot) by therealdeepsix that inspired it. Though it says it's outdated now, it honestly helped me a ton on conceptualizing Bucky's arm. I was careful to watch what was going on with Bucky's arm when it got severed in the film and there was no obvious wiring, but nerve pathways couldn't have been build of vibranium (...probably), so I again took cptsassrogers' [model for a neurosignal base adapter](http://cptsassrogers.tumblr.com/post/89304477227/illustrations-of-pneumatic-artificial-muscles) between the hardware (arm) and software (providing Bucky with sensation and control over the arm) and assumed there were probably a few wires linking to the relevant musculature. There's a scene in Winter Soldier where a circuit board or systems control is obvious as well, so something computer-like is definitely at play here; I based my exposition off this. I did some cursory medical research as well, but I am Not A Sciencer so Bucky's more visceral reactions to losing an arm are based on a very shaky foundation, with apologies.
> 
> I know the significant immigration of Russians into New York didn't happen until the 1970s, but there were SOME Russians in the US from the 1870s, so I took a liberty in referencing a dumpling place in 1940s Brighton Beach.
> 
> And yes, they're using a VCR in 2016. Bucky's Bucharest flat was so endearingly bereft and that was the sum of _two years_ of asset acquisition, so I decided his earlier safehouses were even scarcer, particularly since Bucky was probably really shy with technology at the beginning of his freedom.
> 
> ETA: May 2016 — I've just read that the backpack in Bucharest is full of Bucky's memories that he painstakingly takes down as per Sebastian Stan which is totally fine and not the worst thing I've ever read in my life, so some of the plotpoints here around backpacks don't make as much sense. Imagine the pack in Moscow holds the first journals Bucky made; that there is at least one volume in that pack that has everything there is to know about Steve Rogers. Bucky would want that detailed info, now more than before, I think. He might have left it behind after bullet-journalling for himself the main Steve Rogers points for rememberance.
> 
> ETA: MAY 2018 — The rest of this series is no longer canon-compliant, thanks to the events of Infinity War, BUT it is possible to springboard off this fic and into my [Incorporeality](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1009701) series for the canon-compliant stream. The remainder of this series deals with an alternate timeline where Steve and Bucky work through the assassin trigger without Shuri's help. I plan to keep the series in its original construction, but Incorporeality offshots from it just as well.


End file.
